


Aftermath

by DownToTheSea



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DownToTheSea/pseuds/DownToTheSea
Summary: After returning from the Salem witch trials, Lucy and Flynn share a few moments.





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> This last episode catapulted me SO HARD into Lucy/Flynn feels and this fic just wouldn't get out of my head. My first attempt writing these two, gahh, I hope it's ok! Contains: Lucy still dealing with her time with Rittenhouse and brief mentions of Lyatt. And Flynn/Weapons, aka the REAL OTP.

Lucy felt like someone had punched her in the gut. (Also like someone had slashed her arm open, but that was less metaphorical.)

Rationally, she’d known she would meet Jessica at some point or another. Sooner rather than later, knowing Wyatt’s tendencies to ignore rules he didn’t like. But she’d almost forgotten in that first rush of relief at seeing him back in the bunker safe and sound as she stepped out of the lifeboat. Then...

It was selfish and stupid, she told herself. She should be happy Jessica was back. She and Wyatt were teammates and friends before anything else, and this was what he had wanted ever since this whole thing began. For Lucy to be anything but glad for him felt like a betrayal of trust, and it left her with a hollowness in her chest.

Her head was spinning, and she blinked to clear her vision. She was pretty sure that at least was the blood loss and not the shock. Or maybe it was both. It had been one hell of a day.

She was only dimly aware of Flynn’s hand on her uninjured arm, propelling her down the stairs and across the room, blessedly away from Jessica and Wyatt. Rufus intercepted Agent Christopher and began to fill her in on the mission, and Lucy shot him a grateful look as she and Flynn exited the room, heading down one of the main corridors.

“You left the rifle behind,” she said, if only to distract herself from thinking about the scene she was sure she’d put on for the entire bunker a minute ago.

He shrugged. “I was out of ammo. Besides, I prefer something a little more modern than late 17th century. Think you could put in a word for me?”

She only gave him a look. She might have trusted him, but everyone else had a long way to go.

“Worth a try.” He came to a halt, opening the nearest door, and they stepped into the small infirmary. It wasn’t exactly on the level of the facilities they’d had before moving to the bunker, but it was equipped well enough to take care of the minor to moderate injuries they always seemed to pick up on missions.

Lucy wasn’t quite sure which end of the spectrum the gash in her arm fell onto. As much as it had hurt, it hadn’t seemed that deep at first, but now the throbbing pain was radiating up her entire arm, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what sorts of bacteria had been on that 17th century knife.

It wasn’t surprising that Flynn knew where to go. She supposed he had been exploring his new home even in the short time he had been here, which made sense; he’d probably want to have a detailed layout for the bunker in his mind.

Flynn started rummaging around in one of the cabinets. While he was occupied, Lucy crossed the room and sank gratefully onto one of the low beds. A minute later, he came over and knelt in front of her, laying various medical supplies out next to her before setting the first aid kit down.

She caught sight of something still inside and her lips twitched. “Are we going to be down a pair of surgical scissors when you’re done here?”

He actually grinned at her. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Actually, I will,” Lucy said, but mostly because riling Flynn up was better than thinking about Wyatt, or her mother, or anything that had happened over the last few months.

Sure enough, the smile widened, and before Lucy quite realized, she had returned it.

Leaning forward, Flynn took her arm in both of his hands, supporting it with one while he peeled away the bloody cloth of her sleeve with the other. His touch was gentle, just like it had been back in the lifeboat; but he’d been wearing gloves then, and the warmth of his skin took her by surprise. One thumb rubbed absently near her elbow, which she didn’t think he even realized he was doing. It was actually kind of soothing, and she closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath, a little of the tension in her shoulders relaxing.

Cleaning the wound was a necessary but painful process, and she couldn’t help the occasional wince.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s alright.” She gritted her teeth. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

He glanced up at her, an unreadable look in those deep green eyes, but said nothing and bent over her arm again.

“Thank you,” she told the top of his head after a while. “For – this. And for coming back.”

“You were my ride home,” he said. “You think I wanted to be stuck in the past, spend the rest of my life as a Puritan?”

“Without so much as a butter knife?” Lucy found herself smiling at the weak joke. “I can’t imagine you thriving in that environment.” Then, because she just couldn’t resist, she added,  _ “Isaiah.” _

“I suppose you two would have preferred me to say I was Han Solo.” This was in a perfect deadpan, accompanied by a wry lift of his eyebrow.

Lucy outright laughed. “Actually, I think we’ve done that already.”

It suddenly struck Lucy how strange this was, her sitting here and letting Flynn of all people patch her up, and cracking jokes with him, even bad ones. The whole world seemed to have turned upside down in the last few months, but this one part of the chaos, at least, she couldn’t bring herself to regret right now.

He was nearly done with her arm and the painkillers were kicking in when Rufus came to tell them that Agent Christopher wanted to debrief them. “Sorry,” he told Lucy, giving her a concerned look. “I asked her if she could give you a day, but…”

“It’s ok,” she assured him with a small smile. “I’m fine.”

Still feeling a little shaky, Lucy got up and leaned on a nearby counter. She understood the reasoning behind getting their reports now while everything was fresh in their minds, but all she really wanted to do was to go take this heavy, cumbersome dress off, douse herself in hot water, then crawl into bed and sleep for a very long time.

“You should eat something,” Flynn advised, and to her amusement, Rufus nodded in agreement, then his eyebrows furrowed as if he was disturbed to discover himself agreeing with Flynn about something.

“You could grab something from the kitchen on our way over,” he suggested, before adding, “It’s, uh, Connor’s turn to cook tonight.”

Lucy made a face. “Yeah, I’ll pass.”

Flynn glanced between them. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

“Prison food was bad, right? Well, Connor’s is even worse,” Lucy said succinctly. Rufus groaned his agreement.

“You guys are really living the high life.”

“At least here there are no attempts on your life,” Lucy pointed out as they started towards the door.

“That remains to be seen.”

Flynn didn’t take her arm again as they made their way down the hall, but he stayed close, enough that their arms occasionally touched. Lucy could easily have shifted away, but she didn’t. There was something oddly grounding about him being there next to her.

 

That night, after her usual bout of restless tossing and turning, further exacerbated by the burning pain in her arm that refused to go completely away, and listening to Jiya mutter Terminator quotes in her sleep for a few hours, Lucy decided she’d had enough. She got up and crept out of her room, thinking she would head down to the kitchen and grab something to eat, then maybe walk around for a while to clear her head. She itched for a breath of fresh air on her face, but the outside was still strictly off limits.

As she approached the main room where the kitchen was, she thought she heard the faintest click of a drawer shutting from within. She stopped short, her heart suddenly in her throat as she tried to keep perfectly still in the darkness. Surely anyone in the bunker would have turned the light on if they wanted something, which could only mean –

Lucy swallowed, going cold.  _ Rittenhouse.  _ How had they found her? She stood frozen in the hall, debating whether or not to turn around, go try to find Flynn or Wyatt or Agent Christopher _ ,  _ or keep going and confront whoever it was head on. She might have been injured and the very farthest thing from combat trained, but the thought of one of her friends being killed while she searched for someone to help made her sick to her stomach. Another thought occurred to her: was everyone else still asleep, or had the biggest threats already been quietly dispatched?

She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment, putting that firmly out of her mind, and started inching forwards. If she was quiet enough, maybe she could get a glimpse of what was going on before anyone saw her. If it was just Rufus sleepwalking, she was going to feel really stupid.

Just as she reached the open entrance, the lights snapped on. Her eyes hadn’t even finished widening when Flynn materialized in front of her.

“You snuck up on me,” he observed, sounding highly impressed.

Lucy gasped, surprise and relief hitting her like a freight train. “Jesus!” She leaned against the wall for support and heaved in deep breaths, glaring at Flynn the whole time. “What were you doing in there?”

“Midnight snack,” he said evasively, which Lucy interpreted as “doing something I’m not supposed to.”

“In the dark?”

He didn’t even bother making up an excuse, just continued looking at her, a crease forming in his forehead. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She really wasn’t, but she didn’t see a point in telling him that. Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion he already knew anyway.

He nodded, although she wasn’t sure if it was in acknowledgement of what she’d said or hadn’t said. “...Come on. I’ll make you a sandwich or something.”

It turned out that they were out of bread, which Flynn would probably have noticed if he’d really been looking for a snack. When Lucy pointed this out over the mug of tea she ended up having, he only gave her another long look before sighing and producing a knife from what looked like thin air.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to turn this in too,” he said, giving it an almost longing look.

Lucy sipped her tea. It was only a plain steak knife, but the way he was handling it spoke volumes about how he could put it to use if he so chose.

But after the mission that could have gone so disastrously if he hadn’t gotten his hands on that rifle, not to mention that horrible moment alone in the hall earlier, when she’d been certain Rittenhouse had come to kill her and everyone she cared about… Watching him twirling the knife in his hands, Lucy felt a good deal safer than she had fifteen minutes ago.

She exhaled. “Keep it. And don’t make me regret it.”

His answer was an incredibly smug expression, and Lucy rolled her eyes before turning her attention to her tea again.

“You never said what  _ you  _ were doing sneaking around in the dead of night,” he said after a while, arms crossed as he leaned against a table.

“Midnight snack.” She raised her eyebrows with a challenging expression. He snorted, and though he looked down she caught a glimpse of another smile.

“How is the arm?”

“Painful,” she said frankly. “I don’t suppose you have any tips?”

He raised his hands. “No home remedies, sorry. Though getting some sleep instead of wandering around at two in the morning might help.” He met her eyes with an all-too-knowing look, but there was soft understanding in them too.

Lucy hummed noncommittally and broke her gaze away. There was a part of her that wanted to tell him everything, but most of her just wanted to bury it all down deep and never think about it again. But since he was here, there was one thing she needed to know.

She was still gathering up her courage when he shrugged and pushed himself off the table, preparing to leave. “Enjoy your tea.”

“Wait,” she blurted before he made it out of the room. “I – I have to ask you something.”

He stopped and half-turned, looking at her over his shoulder.

“When you… How…” She trailed off, immediately regretting her decision. She couldn’t ask him this, she just couldn’t. Even if he was the only person she trusted to tell her the truth.

The silence stretched into long seconds. “Who was it?” Flynn asked finally, his voice low and as gentle as his hands had been earlier in the infirmary.

Surprise washed through her, along with hidden relief that she wouldn’t have to put it into words. “How did you know?”

“Because I know that look.” In a few steps he’d crossed the room to her side, so close she could feel the warmth radiating off him. “Who was it, Lucy?”

She swallowed, averting her eyes. “A soldier,” she whispered. “An innocent man.”

Flynn nodded slowly. “You had no choice.” It was less a question and more a confirmation of which he already seemed certain.

Her throat closed up.  _ Had  _ there really been no other choice? Everything had happened so fast, and Lucy had replayed the moment a million times in her mind, but that answer still eluded her.

In a few short, low sentences, she told him what had happened. “Emma would have killed him if I hadn’t.” She’d repeated the words so many times to herself that they’d almost begun to lose their meaning.

“And if you’d refused, you’d be dead now too.” His voice seemed to simmer; with anger at Rittenhouse, and some emotion she couldn’t identify.

“I still killed him,” she fired back. She tilted her head up and met his eyes fiercely. “No amount of justification can change that.”

There was a long moment before he replied. “No,” he said. Stark, simple, and, just as Lucy had expected, honest _.  _ “Nothing will ever change it.”

Feeling suddenly exhausted, Lucy closed her eyes and raised her hand to them. She could still feel him next to her, hear every faint breath. “Will – will it ever – ” Her voice broke, unable to find the words for how desperately she wanted it to get better, how terrified she was that it might.

“Lucy,” Flynn murmured, and it was the unguarded sympathy in that one small word more than anything else that made the pressure in her throat release into a sob. Then his arm was around her, pulling her to him and cradling her head against his chest.

He held her close and let her cry, her body shaking with the force of her sobs. Lucy couldn’t have said how long that went on, but at last they died down a little and she drew in a hoarse breath, still holding onto him, his presence comforting her in a way that she could never have predicted.

“I know what you wanted to ask,” he whispered. “You’re afraid you’re going down the same path I did.” He shook his head slightly, just a shift of his jaw over her hair.

“You’re not a soulless killer, Lucy. You never will be. Trust me on this. If you were a hopeless case, do you think you’d be here torturing yourself over what should or shouldn’t have been? No, you’d be back in your room, keeping Jiya awake with your snoring.”

The knot in Lucy’s heart unclenched, just a little, at his words, and she took in a long, deep breath.

They stayed there for a few more minutes, until she felt him shift slightly, like he was moving to pull away. She gripped his shirt tighter. “Thank you.”

Flynn rubbed her shoulder awkwardly. Lucy probably shouldn’t have found it endearing.

“I don’t think you’re soulless.” Her voice was muffled in his chest. The words felt inadequate, but she was too exhausted to think of a way to phrase it better.

He froze where he stood for several seconds; then he pulled back, giving her a small, sad smile.

“Good night, Lucy,” was all he said, reaching up to cup her face, stroking her cheek once, before he stepped back and vanished into the dark hallway.

Lucy stared after him for a moment before turning to her mug of tea, now ice cold. “Good night,” she murmured to the empty kitchen. “Garcia.”


End file.
